Vitor Penteado Figueiredo Pagotto

Vitor Penteado Figueiredo Pagotto is a third-year medical school student at the University of São Paulo (FMUSP). Having been born in São Paulo, the city with the worst air pollution problem in Brazil, he sees this opportunity to conduct air pollution research at Harvard School of Public Health as unique. His active involvement in science will be ensured by the fact that he is an outstanding student: graduated from Colégio Bandeirantes, one of Brazil’s leading private high schools, he was awarded bronze medal on the São Paulo’s Chemistry Olympiad and another one on the Brazilian Chemistry Olympiad. Besides that, he took part in “Biotechnology Project”, which developed ethical and technical issues related to biotechnology. As a result of his studies, Vitor seeks to deepen his knowledge in order to become a medical doctor able to improve the reality of people. This has been an issue of major concern to him since he got into the college. Therefore, he has done volunteer work related to teaching people of lower social brackets and providing them medical care. Furthermore, he is the president of the “Bandeira Científica”, a multidisciplinary university extension project executed by the Medicine, Psychology, Physical Therapy, Nutrition, Dentistry, Speech Therapy, Journalism, Agronomy, Civil and Environmental Engineering courses in underserved cities. It performs more than 7000 activities per year such as medical care and exams, epidemiological surveys, reports on the health system and on the city hall structure, among other relevant actions that help the city to overcome its difficulties. Vitor plans to take advantage of his time in Boston to learn about the structure, the functioning and the values that guide an institution as renowned as Harvard and then bring this knowledge back to Brazil. He is sure that experiencing the American lifestyle will make him more capable to confront the inequality ofBrazil.